Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!wasatch!utah-gr!uplherc!esunix!blgardne
From: blgardne@esunix.UUCP (Blaine Gardner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Dmouse and 15 color pointers
Keywords: partially blanked animated pointers
Message-ID: <990@esunix.UUCP>
Date: 2 Oct 88 22:42:51 GMT
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation
Lines: 46

Matt, I've run into a slight problem with Dmouse's pointer blanker. It
doesn't blank a 15 color (attached sprite) pointer. This is hardly
surprising since I had never seen a 15 color animated (yes, ANIMATED!)
pointer until a couple of weeks ago. 

What happens is the first 3 colors get blanked, but the extra colors are
still there. This can be a bit distracting when you've got part of an
erupting volcano or a writhing snake on the screen. :-)

Would it be much trouble to blank another sprite? 


Now about these animated pointers. Tim Kemp of Columbus, Ohio has written
a program that will let you animate the mouse pointer. It does this by
assembling a series of pictures you've drawn up. They can be the usual 3
color (plus transparent) and 16 pixels wide, or 15 colors and 32 pixels
wide. 

There are some great pointers in the collection I got: the snake and
volcano mentioned above, a spinning pointer, spinning Boing! ball, the
US flag waving in a breeze, a smiley face (from the yellow button, not
Usenet) that mutates into a little monster, and even a swimming fish
(dedicated to Fred!)

I hadn't heard of these until they were shown off at last month's user
group meeting, so I figure that there are a lot of people out there that
haven't seen them either. Now this is a totally trivial and useless
program, but the entertainment value ranks up there with Leo's Robotroff.

So how to distribute this neat hack across the net? The binaries group
seems to have gone dormant again, and a 50K file is a bit much to post
in this group. (There is no source included in the package I recieved.)
Should I just send it to comp.binaries.amiga, and hope the logjam breaks
soon?

	Blaine


PS Looks like I won't make AmiExpo after all. :-(
   When's the next big Amiga gathering anywhere between Utah and the 
   west coast? Is Comdex going to have much Amiga activity?
-- 
Blaine Gardner @ Evans & Sutherland    580 Arapeen Drive, SLC, Utah 84108
UUCP Addresses:  {ucbvax,allegra,decvax}!decwrl!esunix!blgardne
        	 utah-cs!esunix!blgardne        usna!esunix!blgardne
"Nobody will ever need more than 64K."    "Nobody needs multitasking on a PC."